Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village

Sabbathday Lake is where Shakerism still lives rather than where it is remembered. The community was gathered by Shaker missionaries in 1782 at Thompson's Pond Plantation, raised its meetinghouse in April 1794, and by 1850 ran 1,900 acres with 26 buildings, blacksmith and woodworking shops, mills, and farms supplying the outside world. The Shakers as a movement peaked near 6,000 members around 1840 across nineteen villages from Maine to Kentucky, and every one of those communities closed except this one, a National Historic Landmark since 1974 that is still home to practicing Shakers: Sister June Carpenter, Brother Arnold Hadd, who joined in 1978, and Sister April Baxter, who came to the village in the spring of 2025, an arrival NPR reported in August 2025 as raising the faith's American membership to three. Brother Hadd describes Shakerism's core himself as confession, community of goods, and celibacy, lived as emulation of the life of Christ.

The visit is split between the community and its museum, and the distinction matters. The museum, founded in 1931 by Sisters Iona Sedgley and Ethel Peacock, is presented as the only Shaker museum created by Shakers themselves, with 27 period exhibit rooms in the 2026 season running from May 23 to Indigenous Peoples' Day, 10 to 4:30 Monday through Saturday, in the 1850 Boys' Shop visitor center and the historic buildings around it. The working village around it is the community's home: herb gardens, orchards, meetinghouse, and worship, where the chapel sides still fill for group sings during public events like the Friends of the Shakers weekend. The community's own position, stated on its website, is that Shakerism is not an anachronism but a teaching that God is Love; this entry carries that claim in their words.

Visiting

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village at 707 Shaker Road, New Gloucester, Maine: the museum's 2026 season runs May 23 through Indigenous Peoples' Day, 10 am to 4:30 pm Monday through Saturday; the Visitors' Center is in the 1850 Boys' Shop. Check the site for current admission before visiting (not verified at write-up). The village itself is the community's private home.

Photo: Gerda Peterich, 1962, [Historic American Buildings Survey, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sabbathday_Lake_Shaker_Community_Meetinghouse)